Thursday, August 9, 2012

Is this the same man???

Ive talked before about my Henry Goodrum/William Henry Goodwin  conundrum.

Well I may be a step closer on my trail to solving the mystery.

This week the very nice retired vicar at St Peters Church in Onehunga sent me a photocopy of the register of the marriage of Jane BOYD to Henry GOODRUM, from February 3rd 1842

boytgoodrum

The first thing that struck me about this document is that of the 5 people involved in the wedding, ( the Vicar, Bride, Groom and 2 witnesses) only 2 were literate. Those two being the Vicar Arthur  G Purchas, and the groom, Henry Goodrum.

 

The second thing that was of interest was the witness, Charles Goodrum because the Goodrum family in Gissing, Norfolk that I believe Henry came from included a Charles in the list of siblings . ( I still have to research the age of this Charles to see if the ages match– I have some more details on him that I discovered yesterday)

I have a copy of the signature of William Henry Goodwin, from late in his life, on the copy of his will that I found at Auckland Archives

WHGWill

 

SO my next task was to compare the signatures – Ive done this below

signaturecomp

 

Apart from the obvious difference ( the addition of the name William) and the fact that the 2 signatures were written more than 50 years apart , there are some obvious similarities between the two. The formation of the H in particular really stood along with the capital G. – Also the fact that in both signatures there is no connection between the second o and the d – all lead me to believe that both documents were in fact signed by the same man.

What do you think??

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting.
    May I add my own spin on this?
    Both names read the same to me - Goodwin
    And the marriage register especially reads Goodwin to me.
    I hope you find a definitive answer.

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